Riding solo
by mathspook777
Summary: When Elsa dedicates her life to surfing, her relationship with Anna suffers. (Modern!AU)


An ocean wave swelled. For a moment, it was a crystal blue wall with a crest of delicate white froth. Then it poured forward, wrapping itself into a tight tube and exploding into a spray of salt and foam. Elsa didn't move.

"What's she doing?"

"Shhh."

Elsa locked her eyes on the water. She felt her spirit dissolving into the waves, transcending flesh and uniting with the ocean. Her heart beat to the rhythm of the tides. Her legs felt the strokes of undulating eels and the tickle of scampering crabs. She sensed another wave rising, one far away. Even before it was half-formed, she knew how it would look, how it would move, how it would break. Not that one. It was not perfect.

"But she isn't doing anything!"

"Lilo! Quiet."

It began a year ago. Elsa had spent a lonely winter night with Olaf. Anna and Kristoff were spending the evening with each other. "I wonder what they're doing," remarked Olaf. Elsa knew. She sighed and hoped her little sister remembered to take precautions.

Elsa curled up on the couch with the remote in one hand and a pint of ice cream in the other. At first, she looked for a movie to watch. Action. Click. Science fiction. Click. Romantic comedies. She growled, told herself she didn't like that genre, and gave the remote a vicious click. Cooking competitions, crime dramas, home improvement shows. Click, click, click.

Olaf sat down next to her. "Can I look?" he asked.

"It's up to you," Elsa said. Her first spoonful of ice cream was almost the size of her fist.

Soon Elsa had forgotten about movies. She was wondering if having ice magic meant that calories from ice cream didn't count. Because then she could have a second pint. After hiding this one deep in the trash where no one would notice it.

"This one this one this one this one!" screamed Olaf. "I want to watch this one!"

"Huh?" said Elsa.

"Look!"

The movie was called, "The Endless Summer." Elsa shrugged. "Okay. Whatever."

It was some kind of sports documentary. Elsa slumped over the arm of the couch. At least it would pass the time.

Elsa had heard the word "surfing" before, but she hadn't even known what it meant. Nobody surfed in Arendelle. The water was too cold, the waves too violent, the shoreline too rocky.

"Wow," said Olaf, "it's like some kind of Hawaiian roller coaster ride."

Elsa nodded. A strange feeling had taken hold of her. She was sitting upright now, gaze fixed on the screen. On the waves. She didn't notice when her pint of ice cream fell to the floor, nor when the leftover drops melted into the carpet.

As the credits rolled an hour and a half later, Olaf hopped off the couch and stretched. "Well, that was fun!" Olaf said. "They had so much sun and heat and warmth. Did you like it?"

Elsa just stared at the screen, rigid and immobile.

"Guess so. Well, I'm off to bed. Good night!"

When the credits finished, Elsa let out a gasp. She fumbled for the remote. "More," she whispered.

Elsa was still in front of the television when dawn broke. Somewhere in the distance, she heard tittering. There were whispers and cooing, more tittering, and the sound of someone strutting. Then there was a yelp, a cry of "Not here!" and stifled laughter. Elsa shut it out. She was concentrating.

The tap on Elsa's shoulder made her scream. "Whoa. Sorry," said Anna. "You didn't seem to hear me."

Elsa made a gurgling noise and turned back to the television. She was watching "Riding Giants."

"Are you okay?" asked Anna. "Didn't you sleep?" When Elsa didn't respond, Anna stepped in front of the television. "Hey. Talk to me." To Elsa, the voice sounded far away, as if it were coming from a distant mountain. Her sister, rosy-cheeked and clad in a dressing gown, looked like a stranger.

An image of the ocean appeared in Elsa's mind. She felt like she was lying on a surfboard, waiting outside the break line. The next wave of a set was coming. She paddled. As it peaked next to her, she popped up into a crouch and took off.

"Elsa? What's going on?" asked Anna.

She was riding in the tube now. The sound of the water breaking over her head was almost musical. But the wave threatened to close out in front of her. If she wiped out, the rest of the set would hold her underwater and drown her. She leaned forward into the spray.

"I have a purpose," Elsa rasped. Then she ran to the beach.

Lacking a teacher or even a surfboard, Elsa simply jumped into the icy water. She wanted to feel the seawater course through her hair, to throw her body down the face of a wave and let it caress her skin. But every time she went out, the sea shoved her back, battering her against the gravelly beach. By the time the sun set, her bruised legs were too weak to walk. When Kristoff and Anna found her, she was crawling, hand over hand, back out into the nighttime surf. She tried to struggle when Kristoff picked her up, but her limbs were numb.

Before Elsa had convalesced enough to get out of bed, she had ordered and received a surfboard. "You'll have to run the kingdom for me," she told Anna. "I'm going to be too busy."

"You sound like you hit your head," said Anna.

The first time Elsa caught a wave, her legs flew into the air. She clung to the rail of her surfboard and shrieked. As the wave pushed her forward, the shriek became a cry, and by the time the ride was over, she was hollering with excitement. She lay on her board, laughing and kicking as she wiped the sea foam from her face. Then she went back out for more.

Her routine was simple. She woke before dawn and made her way to the beach by moonlight. She surfed until the sun set and the stars twinkled. Soon, word spread that the Queen of Arendelle was surfing fourteen hours a day. Crowds of spectators, huddled under parkas, stood on the beach. Most were there to see the spectacle of someone surfing in Arendelle's winter. Some wanted to watch their monarch wipe out; a few came to ogle her in her swimsuit. She ignored them all. When the novelty wore off and the crowds left, she was still there, surfing every day.

A few months passed. It was a rainy and windy spring day, and the waves were choppy. Elsa, never deterred, was in the water outside a beach break. She picked a wave that looked good and started paddling. She took her eyes off it for just a moment. Suddenly it surged and she was catapulted into the air. She landed right on the middle of her board, and it snapped in half.

Elsa spent a few minutes on the beach brooding. That was when inspiration struck. She left the fragments of her surfboard behind and swam back into the water. Outside the break, she swept her hands through the water, leaving a shimmering, glittering trail. When she withdrew her hands, ice floated to the surface. Ice; but in the shape of a surfboard.

Elsa allowed herself a smug cackle. She mounted the iceboard and waited for the next wave. When it came, the ride was awesome.

Iceboarding had a different feeling from surfboarding. Not only was ice about twenty times heavier than foam and much more fragile, it melted. Elsa, of course, could simply magic more ice into existence and repair her board as she rode it. What made iceboarding truly spectacular was that she could also change the shape of the board. She could increase the size of the fins to carve a tight bottom turn. Or decrease the rocker for speed. Or lengthen the board for stability. Iceboarding meant she could do the impossible.

But, Elsa felt, Anna always wanted to hold her back. "You've gone crazy," Anna told her a few weeks later. "It's the biggest thunderstorm of the year!"

"Yeah, the waves'll be pretty gnarly," Elsa said.

"Why would you even go outside at all?"

Elsa shrugged. "Eddie would go."

Anna threw up her hands. "It's like we don't speak the same language anymore!"

There was no point bringing a surfboard into an ocean that rough. Elsa spent a few minutes studying how the waves were breaking. When she was satisfied, she left her cape on the beach and ran into the water, making little stepping stones of ice as she went. She tried to climb over the first wave she met, but it broke too quickly, and she was sucked over the falls. On her second try, she dove through the first wave and heaved herself onto a jagged stack of limestone. She climbed to the top but slipped. A quick spray of ice created a slide in front of her, and she took off running again. The next wave was huge, five or six times her height. To reach the surf break she needed to get beyond it, but it was too thick for her to dive through. She froze the surface of the wave into a ramp of ice and kept running. But, as the ramp cracked, she realized the rest of the wave was still moving. The force of the wave shattered the ramp, and Elsa fell into the water.

It was, as she expected, gnarly. She surfed anyway.

Months went by. While Elsa never doubted that she was meant to surf, Anna was frustrated and resentful. "Good thing the kingdom has a spare," she mumbled to herself as she squinted over the national budget. She was almost relieved when Elsa started competing. "She won't be around to remind me she's not around," she explained to Kristoff.

"You're making as much sense as she does," Kristoff said. Anna had lost weight, he thought. She had a spindly, bony look, and her face was locked in a permanent grimace. Kristoff was sure it had to do with Elsa somehow, but Anna refused to talk about it. "Have you ever wondered if you're overreacting?" he ventured. Anna pursed her lips and pretended not to hear him. He knew better than to try again.

Elsa's iceboarding technique shot her to the top of the amateur circuit. Which was how she ended up on the North Shore of Oahu, one win away from qualifying as a professional.

Elsa's heat was the first one of the competition. The ocean was glassy that morning; calm six-foot swells peeled gently down the break. Elsa was already in the water, sitting on her iceboard, waiting for her heat to begin. Two other women, one each from Australia and Japan, waited with her. The last woman in her heat, a local, arrived just as the competition was scheduled to begin. She rushed across the beach, carrying her surfboard, while a man, a little girl, and a peculiar dog-like creature followed. The judges motioned for her to get in the water, and she swam out.

The Hawaiian woman's name was Nani. "Sorry about that," she said as she positioned herself to wait for a wave. She stole a glance at Elsa's iceboard and said, "I've heard about you. You're about to turn pro, right? Good luck."

The words "turn pro" gave Elsa a shudder of excitement. But only a few minutes later, Elsa had a terrible wipeout while backdooring a wave. She had taken off next to the peak of the wave and aimed under the lip, but the wave broke faster than she expected. To make it through the barrel, she pumped her legs and sped up. As she whizzed out the other side, she lost control and hurtled over the shoulder of the wave, landing with a stinging belly flop.

Nani swam over to Elsa. "You okay?" she asked. "That looked pretty hard."

Elsa growled, then nodded and waved Nani away. "I'm fine, don't worry about me."

But Elsa felt sloppy and unfocused, not fine. Whenever she got onto a wave, she felt distracted. She wiped out a lot, and when she didn't, she scored poorly. With three minutes to go in the heat, Elsa had managed one decent wave, but she was firmly in third place behind the Japanese woman. She wasn't going to advance to the next round.

Nani, who was in the lead, swam over to Elsa again. "Hey," she said. "I can see you're disappointed."

"What's it to you?" Elsa snarled.

"Sometimes I don't surf my best either. It's frustrating knowing you can do better and failing. But you still have time. I know you can do it."

And a minute later, Elsa did. Her rail work was flawless as she glided up and down the wall of water, staying on the face with ease and performing cutbacks with panache. The judges were impressed, too. She advanced.

On the beach afterwards, Elsa sought out Nani. "Sorry for snapping at you," Elsa said. "I couldn't have done that last wave on my own. I owe you one. Can I take you out to lunch or something?"

Nani took them to a tiny convenience market. "It doesn't look like much, but trust me," she said.

The man behind the counter called, "Aloha, Nani!" He, Nani, and David began a brisk conversation in Hawaiian. Nani gestured towards Elsa, and the man switched languages. "I hear you're an amazing surfer. Let me get you something special."

Elsa was taken aback by the styrofoam plate she was presented with. "Is that raw fish?" she asked.

"Yup," said Nani.

"It's called poke," offered Lilo. "You spell it like 'poke' but it's Hawaiian so you say all the letters."

While the raw fish looked unappetizing, the flavor was exquisite. "This is amazing," said Elsa. "We don't have anything like this in Arendelle."

"I heard you also don't have much surfing there," said David. "How'd you get started?"

"Well, I'd barely even heard of it. But about a year ago, I watched a surf movie by accident. Since then I haven't wanted to do anything else."

"You've only surfed for a year?" asked Lilo. "I've been surfing way longer but I'm not half as good as you."

"But she has an iceboard," said Nani.

"Again with the iceboard," teased David. To Elsa, he said, "She's been talking about iceboards for a week straight. Ever since she learned you were going to be in the same heat."

"It's unique," insisted Nani. "It makes her special."

"I'm not that special," said Elsa. "I just practice a lot. Really I don't do anything else anymore."

Nani nodded. "That's why I've never wanted to be a pro. Too much sacrifice."

"Sacrifice?"

"You know," said Nani. "All the hours in the water instead of with your family. That sort of thing."

"I guess that never bothered me. I love my sister, but she seems so distant. I mean, we didn't see each other for a long time, which wasn't her fault. But," Elsa said, her voice rising, "now she goes off with her boyfriend, and I'm alone again. Sometimes she doesn't even remember I'm there. At least the waves pay attention to me!" Elsa's hands, balled into tight fists, had turned white. She slumped. "Sorry, I don't want to talk about this."

"Let's change the subject," said David. "I thought people in Arendelle made some kind of pickled fish thing."

"Oh!" said Elsa. "Yeah, we make pickled herring. I love pickled herring."

Nani and David kept the conversation away from family matters. But late that evening, back at home and after Lilo was in bed, Nani made a phone call. She had never tried to dial internationally before and didn't even know how it was done. When she did figure it out, all she got was an error tone and an automatic message, "We're sorry, your dialing plan does not offer international calls." A quick search found scores of Internet phone apps. Before long she had one with a one month free trial.

"Hello?" said Nani. "I'm trying to reach Princess Anna of Arendelle. Is this the right number?"

A woman's voice said, "Who is it?"

"My name is Nani Pelekai. I'm calling about her sister."

Nani heard some kind of disgusted grunt. "Make it quick," said the voice.

"She misses you. She thinks you ignore her."

The woman was instantly angry. "I don't know who you are, but this is none of your business—"

"She wants to see you! We have a word in Hawaiian, ohana. It means, 'family.' It would mean everything to her if you just showed up to watch her surf—"

"Ever since she started surfing she hasn't cared about me! Or anyone else! Well, I don't care about her either! Don't ever call me again!" The woman hung up.

Nani stewed for a while. Maybe she had gone too far. She was trespassing on Elsa's family life and being rude and obnoxious. But Elsa seemed so upset about her sister. Nani was sure something wasn't right.

When the idea came, Nani knew it would work. This time she dialed a different number. "I'm looking for Kristoff Bjorgman."

The man's voice was amiable. "You got him. How can I help?"

When they hung up two hours later, they had a plan.

When Kristoff and Anna touched down in Hawaii, they went straight to the beach. By the time they arrived, the competition had reached the semifinals. "It's good to meet you in person," Kristoff said to Nani as they shook hands.

"You too. You made it just in time. She just got into the water." Nani offered her hand to Anna. "I realize I've intruded, and I'm sorry. But it felt important."

Anna folded her arms. "I'll forget it if you get me my sister back."

Nani had been knocked out in the third round of the competition. "It was further than I expected to get," she told Anna and Kristoff. She stayed on the beach with them, explaining what Elsa was doing. "She has priority right now. A set of waves is going to come soon . . . look, she's moving. She's going to skip the first wave and get into position for the next one . . . there, she's going. A tight turn at the bottom. A cutback. Look, she got her surfboard off the lip. She's floating over a broken part of the wave. The wave's ending. She managed a roundhouse cutback, now she's kicked out, she's done. A short ride, but good!"

Elsa was aggressive. She rode wave after wave with ferocity, even recklessness. When she succeeded, her performance was astonishing. But more often, she had a spectacular wipeout. Even standing on shore, Nani could see Elsa's furious face as she pounded her fists against the water.

The judges signaled that the heat was over. Elsa had won.

Elsa approached Anna and Kristoff quietly. She stopped a few feet away and stayed silent for a long time. Eventually she said, "Hi, sis."

"Hi," mumbled Anna. She cleared her throat. "I saw you out there."

"Ah," said Elsa. Then they were both silent again.

Nani hoped to start a conversation. "I invited them to watch you," she said.

"I can see that," said Elsa. More silence.

"Well, it was nice to see you," said Anna.

"You too." They gazed at each other. Neither moved.

Kristoff said, "So I'm feeling awkward. How about I just leave the two of you here for a while—"

Elsa shook her head. "No, we're fine. Everything is fine—"

Anna broke in. "Why are we like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like this! I feel like I don't know you anymore!"

"Because you don't pay attention to anyone but Kristoff," Elsa steamed.

"You care more about surfing than you do about us," Anna countered.

Elsa gnashed her teeth and dug her fingernails into her palm. She looked towards the ocean, away from Anna. Waves swelled and crashed. Why did she surf? And why did Anna feel so distant?

Elsa reached out her hand to Anna. "Come with me," she said.

"Where are we going?"

"Trust me." Elsa waded into the water. When they were chest deep, Elsa stopped. This would be a good place to start. She waved her hand over the water, creating an icy bodyboard. "Get on my back," she instructed.

"Look, if you think I'm going to take up surfing, then—"

"I don't. Do you trust me?"

Elsa's eyes sparkled. It reminded Anna of when they were little girls playing in the snow. She got on.

When they caught their first wave, Anna whooped and screamed. As they stopped, she burst into giggles. When Elsa turned to go back out, Anna was at her side. They spent an hour in the water, mostly surfing, sometimes swimming, occasionally splashing each other, but always talking. They kept talking through dinner with Nani and her family. They didn't stop until late in the evening, when Kristoff told them that Elsa needed to get some rest or else she'd sleep through her final tomorrow morning.

That was how Elsa ended up in the water, waiting for the perfect wave.

"Is there something wrong with her?" whispered Lilo.

"Just wait," replied Anna.

Elsa felt the swell coming. She knew its presence, its nature, before it was even visible. This one. This one was perfect.

Elsa took off. She lengthened her iceboard and steered to the lip of the wave. She cross-stepped to the front of the board, turned around, and hung her heels off the board. Then she put her arms out and flipped, landing square on the iceboard's tail.

"That's impossible," said David.

"No, it's my sister," said Anna.

Elsa shortened her iceboard and descended the face of the wave. She crouched and touched her hand to the water to slow down. The wave broke over her head in a perfect, hollow tube. She closed her eyes, riding backwards through the tube, steering only by her feel of the ocean. She thought of Anna. She smiled, a private smile that nobody else would ever see.

The wave was ready to end. Elsa pumped her legs a few times and flew out of the tube. She shot up the face and sailed into the air, flipping and twisting high above the water. As she descended, she enlarged her board once again and reshaped it into an enormous V. As she landed, her board sliced through the wave, gouging a hole clear through the face. Water erupted in all directions. When the spray and mist cleared, she was standing on her board, arms overhead in triumph.

The spectators burst into cheers. Even the judges were ecstatic.

Anna's biggest shock, however, came after the competition was over.

Elsa was in front of a camera, doing an interview with a sports reporter. He asked, "You had some difficult moments during the competition. How does it feel to have won?"

"Good, really good," Elsa said.

"Are you looking forward to the professional circuit?"

Elsa shook her head. "I need to spend more time with my family. This is my dear sister, Anna," she said, pulling Anna into the camera frame, "and her sweet boyfriend, Kristoff, who has more common sense than both of us put together. Don't be shy, get in front of the camera," she said, tugging on his hand. "And I don't want to forget my friends Nani, David, Lilo, and Stitch. I wouldn't be here without all of them."

"You're not turning pro?" asked the incredulous interviewer.

"Oh, I'm still going to compete. I like surfing too much to give it up. But what's most important to me is my family." 


End file.
